Did You Know...

I told you yesterday afternoon about the illegal alien amnesty provision slipped into the Iraq war supplemental by Dianne Feinstein and the cretinous Larry Craig. The post has been updated with details, but I’m starting a new thread to emphasize that there’s time to kill this thing. You’ve done it before and you can help do it again. Roy Beck reports that the full Senate will likely vote next Wednesday, so keep the heat on.

For those of you who missed the updates:

Because the House of Representatives unexpectedly delayed the Iraq supplemental spending bill late Thursday, the full Senate won’t be allowed today to vote on the amnesty bill that the Senate Appropriations Committee unexpectedly took up and approved Thursday.

It now looks like the full Senate won’t be allowed to vote on the amnesty for around 1.3 million illegal alien ag workers (plus their families) until next Wednesday.

That gives us some time to beat this atrocity…

…
Rosemary Jenks (our Vice President, Government Relations) just called me after finishing reading the Iraq supplemental spending bill as it came out of committee. It would:

# Grant a three-year work visa followed by a permanent greencard to all illegal aliens who have been working as shepherds, goat herders and dairy herders.

# Grant a five-year work visa to the estimated 1.3 million illegal aliens working in other agricultural jobs — plus all of their families. There is no instruction on what happens after the five years.

# Grant a tripling of the maximum number of H-2B visas for lower skill, non-agricultural seasonal workers.

Friends, perhaps you are thinking what I’m thinking: Don’t these Senators know that we are in an economic recession, or close to it? Don’t they know that unemployment rates have been going up and that industries across the country are shedding both skilled and unskilled jobs?

If ever you doubted that U.S. Senators live lives disconnected from ordinary Americans, you could see it Thursday as 17 of them fell all over themselves to drastically increase the number of foreign workers allowed to hold U.S. jobs!

RIDICULOUS CLAIMS ABOUT RUNNING OUT OF FOOD WITHOUT AN AMNESTY

Senators Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) led the way to protect our economy from having to figure out ways to hire some of the 14 million-plus American workers who are trying to find a job but can’t.

Especially interesting is their claim that we will fail to harvest crops and feed the world this year without an amnesty for illegal aliens. They made the same claim in each of the last four years. Each time that we beat back the amnesty, the harvests still happened! How many times does Feinstein have to cry wolf (or rotting crops) before people stop paying attention?

Of course, the outlaw businesses that scream for illegal aliens do have more to fear this year because various enforcement policies (federal, state and local) are beginning to drive more and more illegal aliens home.

What we have to constantly remind everybody, though, is that each of these outlaw growers at any time can come clean, go straight and become a legal, patriotic member of the business community by importing any needed foreign ag workers through the H-2A temporary worker program. There is no limit on how many they can import as long as they pay them decently and ensure that they go home.

The North Carolina Growers Association has used the H-2A visa program for years and opposes all efforts at amnesty for illegal alien ag workers. If the program works fine for North Carolina farmers, why do farmers in other part of the country insist that only illegal aliens will fit the bill?

Call your Senators. Call GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (***thank him for voting against the Feinstein/Craig amendment and urge him to support the effort to strip the amnesty out of the Iraq supplemental bill***): 202-224-3121.

What part of “no” don’t they understand?

***

A Senate staffer says there will be an amendment offered by Sen. David Vitter to strip the Feinstein/Craig amendment from the Iraq supplemental bill when it hits the floor next week.